This whole argument is stupid. It's not the hammer, baseball bat, knife, gun, ... manufacturer's responsibility if you use their product to produce inappropriate results. It's their responsibility to make sure that it can be used safely for it's intended purpose, but not guard against every possible misuse the average idiot can come up with. Is it irresponsible of the manufacturer that I can swing my hammer at my toe? Should all hammers be built so that they will only swing when the target is an approved force receptacle?

If it was a "simple" accident through no egregious fault of the driver, manufacturer of the car, engineer that designed the bridge, builder of the bridge, or the pedestrian, then yes shit happens and it sucks. Life isn't pretty and bad things happen all the time.

If, however, there is demonstrable fault on any of the related parties (maybe the pedestrian was naked and distracted the driver...) then the offending parties should be held accountable.

What this means in terms of TFA is that if an engineer inputs bad/incomplete data to a CAD system and the result is a bridge that is not suited for the location that it is actually being built for, then the fault is with the person using the program and not that of the developer. If, on the other hand, the user inputs all the data and it is all correct but the program outputs a bad design, then the software maker has some responsibility (though the users have a responsibility to check the output too).

When there are contradicting variables (speed limit, driver skill, weather, visibility, etc..), no and it's the driver's responsibility if they do so.

If you want to take it to a safe location (track) to try to do that, then more power to you and it's mostly on your own head.

Porsche isn't responsible for someone taking their 991 GT3 out to the track, misjudging their apex, and running into the wall. They are, however, responsible for a design flaw that caused some engines to catch fire while being appropriately operated in normal driving conditions.

If you know something is dangerous and do not take measures to address it (fixing it yourself, not driving it, etc..), then yes you are 100% responsible for your actions and the results. I know the engine in one of my cars has a couple of design flaws that can lead to a catastrophic engine failure in a measurable percentage of cars. I also know that the manufacturer failed to acknowledge the issue and address it. I am also aware that there are now after market solutions that address most of these problems. Finally I am also aware that it is fully on my head that I continue to drive the car with the risk of losing my engine because I currently opt not to proactively address the items at this time.

The problem with this particular argument which you fail to grasp is that while GM knew of the problem for a long time, they made light of it at best (telling people not to use a keychain) and actively hid it at worst (never issuing a recall or warning to owners, you only got the keychain response IF it had failed and you complained). I also believe that even in those cases where people experienced the failure and got the keychain BS, they weren't informed that their airbag was being disabled at the same time. If that is indeed the case, then GM is doubly responsible as it not only told them not using a keychain solved the problem, but it also implied that the vehicle was otherwise safe and operating as expected (the average person does not understand that the airbag is tied to the ignition).

I don't think so, just look at how they are still fighting it while the rest of the world now knows that the "war" is over and digital media won. Rather than embrace it and figure out how to improve their customer's lives with a quality product, they instead continue to invest in DRM schemes that are broken almost as fast as they are released and try to demand that people pay to use content that they have already paid for in another format.

You are right about allowing them too much control though. Up until then all of AOL's acquisitions went smoothly and were done more like friends shaking hands than a typical corporate buyout (hostile or not). All the earlier pick ups were other small agile companies similar (in personality) to AOL itself though. AOL tried to treat TW the same way which was a big mistake. I suspect TW knew how naive AOL was and took advantage of that from the beginning.

I was an employee at the time and you partially hit the nail on the head there.

Steve Case was by far the best CEO I've ever worked under. Both naturally charismatic and a strong long term vision. As far back as the Q-Link days he never wanted to be a service provider or a technology company. He wanted to create a new medium for people to get their content and us buying TW was supposed to be the realization of that idea.

Unfortunately Steve had no idea what he was getting into going up against the entrenched old media execs and his allowing them to retain some control was AOL's undoing.

At the time of the purchase teams at AOL had developed working POCs for streaming music and video delivery that worked with minimal buffering at 19.2k while retaining good quality (of course that was before HD took off). What Apple did with the iTunes store we had done long before. All we needed was the keys to the TW media kingdom and the digital media landscape would have looked a lot different. We all know what old-media thinks about digital content though...

Steve's last misguided act in the saga was to sacrifice himself to get Ted Turner out, but there was no one that ever replaced Steve's drive and passion and TW took more and more control.

Contrary to gstoddart's uneducated understanding of things, AOL was the only profitable (mostly due to the dialup income) portion of TW after history had been re-written. TW bled the money out and into other money pits until there was nothing left and they finally let AOL go.

AOL always got a bad rap and many of my co-workers were afraid to admit they worked there. It was a good company that filled it's role very well. It was never a service meant for those with technical ability. It was meant for those that barely wanted to know what a computer was and it served them very well. It saddens me still how things turned out and that they've fallen into typical flailing around that many companies seem to do these days when trying to chase short term profits.

You are correct that doing such a thing wouldn't solve the problem and would indeed make it phenomenally worse, but being a parent and dealing with someone threatening your child's best interests and well being can make you do stupid things that you wouldn't otherwise do if you could think about it logically.

Personally I love shooting, but I choose not to own guns because I'm not so sure I couldn't be pushed to use it in the wrong situation. My experience with CPS is one of those times I can look back and be thankful I continue to make that choice. That isn't to say I would have actually done it, but I'm just glad the temptation wasn't there to begin with.

I'm glad you had a decent experience that didn't turn into a nightmare. That probably has more to do with your son not actually living with his bio-dad (based on your description) than anything else. There are also (I have to believe anyway for the sake of my sanity) cases daily where they really need to be involved and they actually have a good outcome on the child's life.

I've had plenty of interactions with cops over the years for various reasons and I've found the majority to be nice people that really are out to help, but look at the overall state of the police forces in this country right now.

Things may not be as bleak as those of us that have suffered false/bad accusations and antagonistic case workers make it seem, but much like issues with the police there is obviously a common thread that is wide spread enough to be something that you can't just disregard.

I don't know about tompaulco's assertions since they didn't include the state in question, but it's not specifically about them being "out to get you". It's about them taking the view that Mandatory Reporters are always correct and that the parents can't be trusted. Then you throw in the valid cases that they deal with which have to eat at them and understaffing. Finally you add in judges that should be involved to question the claims and decide if removing the child is really in the best interests of said child, but they too frequently see the worst of the worst and just go with what they are told without really questioning.

In my case my wife wanted to have a natural birth and didn't want to do it in a hospital, but at 2 weeks late and a 14.5" head the likelihood of a good outcome outside a hospital would have been low. She was finally convinced about a month before the due date to deliver in the hospital, but then she had to be induced after he was 2 weeks late. Unfortunately she was an unlucky one and got the rare side effect from the induction drugs that actually make the contractions much worse to deal with. In the middle of all that she started demanding to go home and screaming about how "she didn't want this" (how the delivery was happening). I argued with her about the stupidity of trying to leave in that situation. Explicatives were used judiciously. Ultimately we did stay and she had to have a c-section which she really didn't want.

The Nurse reported it to CPS as "the mother said she does not want the child and the father supports her".

4 hours later CPS from the county the hospital was in showed up and started asking questions. She actually seemed pretty decent from what I recall. 2 hours after that the bitch from the county we live in showed up and the 3rd sentence out of her mouth was "I'm here to review if we should take custody of your son". We had a 30 minute conversation where it was obvious that she didn't give a damn what I had to say and ended with "your son will not be allowed to leave the hospital without my approval". I was lucky that my parents had that friend who guided us through getting through that weekend so we could actually take our son home when my wife was discharged. We also got the "sign this action plan or we'll take your son" line as well.

Fast forward to his 2nd week when we are scheduled to have our home inspection. At the advise of our lawyer we had a 3rd party scheduled to be present as a witness. The visit is scheduled for 11am. Our witness gave up and went back to work at 1pm when she had still not showed up or returned any of my phone calls. At 1:30 just after my wife gets in the shower and my son has fallen asleep she finally shows up and bangs on my door until I answer it to find she has a Sheriff in tow. I explain that she is 2.5 hours late, my wife is in the shower, and our witness has already left due to her tardiness so we need to reschedule it. I also stated that the Sheriff was not part of the planned interview and I didn't not wish to have him in my home. Her response was that I either let them in now or she would call the judge to get an order to remove my son. She also refused to let me film the visit and said if I continued with these "delaying tactics" she would have my son removed from the home. To the Sheriff's credit I could see how appalling he found her actions written all over his face.

Ultimately I had no choice but to let them in and walk around.

I count us lucky that she ultimately decided to drop the case a month later. The whole experience was ridiculous and overly antagonistic because she was young and over zealous.

I think the Nurse that started this all is an idiot that needs to never "help" people again, but I get that she had to report what she thinks she witnessed. I get that CPS needs to make sure the child will be safe and well cared for and I don't think they were "out to get me". What I think is that there was a dire lack of common sense and reason applied to the situation and constantly threatening to take the child is not the appropriate response before there is actual evidence of danger to the child.

Yes, but much like the secret courts that approval NSA/FBI/CIA spying on citizens the court is a rubber stamp. The CPS worker simply appears in front of a judge (which they can get done outside of court hours) and makes the recommendation to remove your child and the judge follows that recommendation. You don't get to be there or even have a representative. In a few short hours your family is destroyed and will never be the same again even if it does eventually get to be whole again.

We did actually look at that as we did have a few other places we could have gone pretty easily. The advise of our lawyer and my parents friend was not to do that as most states are very accommodating to each other for CPS cases and "running" often makes it worse (e.g. CPS in the new state will go directly to the judge to take custody).

You are obviously someone that has never had the threat of having your hours old son taken from you on the word of a Nurse that heard something said out of context by a woman in the midst of a delivery that was not going as desired/expected and then misreported the whole thing. Then to have to start dealing with all of that when you haven't slept in 40 hours and your wife is still under the effects of the anesthesia and pain killers from her emergency c-section. I quite literally laughed at the CPS person due to the absurdity of it all and it took awhile to sink in how serious the situation was.

In the other case that I mentioned, just what type of bond do you think that kid is going to have with it's parents that it barely saw for the first two years of it's life. What long term impacts is that going to have on the kid's life and relationship with it's parents? What about the long term impact to the parents?

I'll take a beating or being killed by cops any day as there is at least a chance (however slim that might be) of justice. With CPS there is only misery if you don't play along (not that playing along is a treat) and there is zero recourse.

Sadly by this going public I expect CPS to be up in this family's affairs for years to come. They may not actually lose the children, but that won't negate the pain and frustration of having to deal with CPS with "if you don't do this, we'll take the children" being their goto response for any question.

Really? I think "nerd" parents are more likely to be like these parents and allow their kids to explore the world and do things that the average over protective parent would have a seizure over.

The problem is in many cases they don't do any due diligence. They blindly accept whatever a Mandatory Reporter (Teacher/Doctor/Nurse/etc..) tells them regardless of how patently false or idiotic the report is. By all means they should follow up, but after my own experience I've talked to others that have crossed CPS' path and the stories are all similar to this one. Something that should not have been an issue got CPS involved and CPS immediately took an adversarial path and threatened to take the kid(s) even before any "investigation" could be done.

I unfortunately had a run in with CPS when my son was born and while they don't have the power to take them on the spot, what they recommend to the judge is what happens. While going through that we hired a lawyer and luckily my parents were friends with an ex-CPS worker from one of the counties involved (I had two counties to deal with in this case) who moved in down the street from them. Basically whatever a Nurse/Doctor/Cop/Teacher/etc.. says is taken as gospel in these cases and the parents are treated as villains regardless of a lack of evidence (or even basic common sense regarding the accusation).

The lawyer we hired was dealing with another case almost identical to ours. They unfortunately didn't control their gut reactions to these injustices (and it is very difficult when they are threatening your family like that) and the 2 month old child was removed from their home. 2 years later they were finally getting custody back again.

Both the lawyer and ex-CPS guy also said that even after the issue is "settled" you don't want to try to go after them as they will find some reason to re-open the case or find an excuse to start a new one. People complain about the abuse of power and unaccountability from Cops, but they really don't hold a candle to CPS.

Studying why people are unhappy in their jobs is worthwhile so that people can learn how to find jobs that they are happier in as happier workers tend to be more productive.

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion though. Personally I find that my best managers were the ones that had little or no technical ability in the realm of what their staff did. They also happened to be the ones that actually understood the role of a manager and managed the team/projects on the whole rather than trying to get into the details. All the "knowledgeable" managers I've had fall into two equally bad (to me) categories. The first really doesn't know as much as they think and make life more difficult by injecting bad or wrong information into the process which (at best) drags things out or (at worst) makes the whole team look like a bunch of idiots that can't get their stories straight. The other group is those that actually do know their stuff, but they fall back to just doing it themselves rather than managing their team to get things done.

The real key is that the staff has to trust the manager to stay out of the low level details and the manager has to trust his staff to actually be competent at their jobs (and if not, do something proactive about it). Without the trust and everyone sticking to their actual role it all falls apart and people are miserable.

Just where will that be experienced in the real world? All I see is a mile or more of blocked lanes for two guys sitting on the tailgate of a pickup...

Or are they testing how the computers can deal with something that just doesn't compute?

My first real job saw me grow through the company over 14 years. Since then I've done a 2 year contracting position and a 3 year stint at a 3rd company. I will personally always keep an open ear in case that "perfect" job comes along, but I go into any new position with the intention of being there long term (ideally the rest of my career). My average at given position is about 2.75 years which seems to appeal to prospective employers as they see a lot of resumes with 6-12 month jobs and they get concerned about their ROI.

I'm now looking at a new position in a different company where the SVP has been there for 21 years and the Lead that I'd be working with has been there 15 years. As a prospective employee I find that a bonus as it suggests that A) the company is worth being at long term and B) it's probably not a meat grinder.